Like this:

I’ve just become really conscious of the fact that in only the last three years, business contacts that I call (which is what I do at work) at least 20% hang up with “have a blessed day.” Realizing this sends a Big Chill up me. I’ve been around a looong time, and this is creepy as hell. And no it is not regional.

The irony is staggering beyond all comprehension. James Comey violated the most basic of tenets of the FBI twice. And that rule reminds one of the first rule of Fightclub: you do not discuss ongoing investigations publically.

[June 2017] The irony is staggering beyond all comprehension. James Comey violated the most basic of tenets of the FBI twice. And that rule reminds one of the first rule of Fightclub: you do not discuss ongoing investigations publically. And Comey himself emphasized that himself recently (listen to the podcast). That alone should open the door to an investigation and, most likely, the censure and firing of Comey. By defying this rule, Comey may very likely have essentially put Trump in office. But given the timing, as mentioned in the aforementioned podcast, it’s obvious that Trump summarily fired him for his own reasons and did so in his inimitable egregious way. I’m losing count of just how many ironies there are in this tragicomedy: he should be fired, but not like that, he’s a threat to Trump for many reasons, but he helped put him in office but… I need a drink.
PS. check out this article.

Grim warnings about climate change may prompt more skepticism than action, simply because they seem unjust. Portraying children as innocent victims, for instance, conflicts with common assumptions that the world is fair—a clash that might trigger doubt and inaction. Indeed, a recent survey showed that the stronger one’s belief in a just world, the greater one’s skepticism after reading a grim global warming article (but not an optimistic one that also presented solutions). Researchers found they could reduce participants’ skepticism—and increase their willingness to act—by tweaking their worldviews with statements such as “Often, justice will not prevail.” Environmental organizations may want to take note.”

So here we discover one source of denial; one of many, I daresay; but not the evolutionary roots of this behavior. Perhaps nurture trumps nature as I seem to have been born without this “denial gene,” as is, by my reconing, 1% of the population. I’m not going into my personal enviro/nurture histology at this point, however.

Elsewhere, I’ve read about the possible correlations between intelligence and depression. More recently, I read about the correlation between intelligence and fondness for drink.

Indeed, ignorance is bliss.

I’m disturbed, but not surprised by the mild Panglossianism implied by the syntax of the last sentence in the above quote, about environmental activists incorporating this in their climate education endeavors.

Shit man, this implies a lot more than that. If progressives of all stripes want to make significant impact on the majority’s inherent ostrich-head-in-the-sandicity, here’s a major key. No pun intended.

Listening to a “This American Life” episode this morning, focusing on global warming. This addresses two of my favorite interests: humility and denial.

I was seven when I began to grasp some of the issues that have always concerned that small band of unhappy few who actually care to use more than 5% of their on-board computers; issues such as suffering, war, disease and as of the last 50 years, global warming.

For now, I’ll just cut to the chase. My father relentlessly abused my mother and me from the time I was six, and almost always behind closed doors. It was probably a lot earlier than that for Mom, but that’s when it started for me. Bottom line is that it was some combination of sociopathy, PTSD brought on by childhood and adult trauma, OCD and male Jewish anger. I only saw a relatively normal father in the last two years of his life. At that time he was put on a daily dose of an antipsychotic starting the very first day that he was admitted to a nursing home.

My point is that David (Dad) was convinced that my mother and I were deficient in various ways that necessitated regular exposures to his dictates and wisdom. He even went so far as to take us together to a venerable psychiatrist ( as I recall, a classic Viennese old-school Freudian) to get an evaluation of us two. We only went once and D made it clear that it was we two who were to be scrutinized, not him.

I won’t have time to finish this this morning so I will tie this all together this weekend, inchallah, but for now my point is that, in general, pride and denial rule human affairs, and now they rule our global environment. Most of us never seem to be able to make the tiny mental leap from witnessing the sheer craziness all around us to understanding that we can all easily fall prey to the illusion that everyone else may be fallible but we ourselves are the soul of sanity and realistic thinking.

FROM THE WEEK MAGAZINE MOBI VERSION.
“The two companies join an All-Star team of tech giants to throw their collective weight around in D.C. — which could be a boon for internet freedom.

The tech world is used to seeing Google, Facebook, and Yahoo duke it out in an increasingly bloody battle for online advertising dollars. But this week, the companies showed their cooperative side, joining Amazon, LinkedIn, Monster, Zynga, and eBay to form the country’s first lobbying group dedicated solely to the interests of internet companies. The who’s who of tech luminaries is blandly called the Internet Association, but with its pool of big bucks, the group is sure to make an impact on Congress. Here’s what you should know:

Don’t tech companies already lobby Congress?
Yes, but only as individual corporations or in colloboration with groups that don’t focus exclusively on internet issues. Google has led the way, spending some $9 million in lobbying in the first half of 2012, up from $3.5 million during the same period in 2011.

Why are they joining forces now?
The companies received a wake-up call last year, when members of Congress tried to pass two bills — the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA) — that were designed to curb internet piracy. Internet companies, however, feared that the bills “would block or punish their sites for containing pirated movies, books, and songs,” says Cecilia King at The Washington Post. The battle pitted the companies against established lobbying groups for Hollywood and the music industry, convincing the tech sector to get serious about lobbying. The bills were ultimately defeated after protests from prominent sites and advocates for internet freedom.

What does the group propose to do?
The Internet Association says it will focus on the issues of piracy, copyright, privacy, and cybersecurity. The group also pledges to keep the internet as free as possible. “It is the internet’s decentralized and open model that has unleash unprecedented entrepreneurialism,” says President Michael Beckerman. “Policymakers must understand that the preservation of that freedom is essential to the vitality of the internet itself and the resulting economic prosperity.”

Is this a positive development for web users?
Perhaps. Some believe that the Internet Association will be a key force in preserving internet liberties, which means that it’s not “just another lobby representing the 1 percent,” says David Kravets at Wired. However, “as with any lobby, the Internet Association formed to protect its own interests,” says Natasha Lennard at Salon. The group will almost certainly oppose, for example, “certain privacy regulation intended to protect consumer information.”

On my reading list Shortlink: http://wp.me/p4njL-bg “The nationally best-selling author of The Long Emergency expands on his alarming argument that our oil-addicted, technology-dependent society is on the brink of collapse—that the long emergency has already begun…”

Help support creation of documentary on book about Iran by Noam Chomsky and David Barsamian

“The project:TARGETING IRAN is a thirty-minute film based on the book by David Barsamian and Noam Chomsky. Thanks exclusively to financial contributions from independent supporters, we have been able to complete our interviews with David Barsamian, Noam Chomsky and Dr. Vandana Shiva. Now we need to hunker down and focus on editing and distributing the final piece! Without financial support we simply cannot afford the time to finish this important work.

As Israeli and American policy makers consider a bombing of Iran‘s nuclear facilities, the corporate media is dutifully ignoring many issues related to Iran and the country’s nuclear ambitions. Through the lens of some of the world’s greatest sociopolitical thinkers, TARGETING IRAN will examine the many political, historical, economic, military and cultural aspects of the U.S./Iranian tensions that are not being discussed in the mainstream media.

It is our intention to release the film widely, for free, before this year’s U.S. presidential election. Outlets include Free Speech TV, MoveOn.org, community access stations, and internet sites offering free downloads. We will then take the film on the festival circuit to increase exposure.

Our first film, SOURCE TO SEA: THE COLUMBIA RIVER SWIM won several awards on the film festival circuit and screened in theaters across the United States and Canada. Awards included 2007 Wild and Scenic Environmental Film Festival “Most Inspiring Adventure Film”, 2008 Telly Award “Outstanding Achievement In Sound Design” and 2007 EarthVision Film Festival “Environmental Activism/Social Justice Award”.

Please help us get this important film into the public sphere as soon as possible!”

UPDATE

“Hello Indiegogo supporters! It’s day thirteen of our campaign and we are very grateful to those who have supported this project! Knowing that people across the globe see the importance of this issue is very encouraging! However, we are still very far from our goal!

We had hoped to travel to New York to interview Targeting Iran’s co-authors in New York. We had also hoped to get the film out before the US Presidential election. Both of these goals seem evasive at this point, and indeed, the entire film is in jeopardy. We need several thousand dollars in additional contributions to even think about editing this film and distributing it to a global audience, for free.”

This just occurred to me, and I know it’s mean, but in regards to the financial meltdown in Spain… to paraphrase Tricky Dick (a notorious anti-semite who loved kissing her, look it up kids), this time “you don’t have the jews and muslims to kick around and rip off anymore.”

Who knows, maybe Spain would be better today, by keeping her nasty mitts off of her jews and muslims huh? Ditto Russia, Poland etc….

It is unknown exactly how much wealth was confiscated from converted Jews and others tried by the Inquisition. Wealth confiscated in one year of persecution in the small town of Guadaloupe paid the costs of building a royal residence.[80] There are numerous records of the opinion of ordinary Spaniards of the time that “the Inquisition was devised simply to rob people. “They were burnt only for the money they had,’ a resident of Cuenca averred. “They burn only the well-off,” said another. In 1504 an accused stated, “only the rich were burnt.” …In 1484…Catalina de Zamora was accused of asserting that “this Inquisition that the fathers are carrying out is as much for taking property from the conversos as for defending the faith. “It is the goods that are the heretics.” This saying passed into common usage in Spain. In 1524 a treasurer informed Charles V that his predessor had received ten million ducats from the conversos, but the figure is unverified. In 1592 an inquisitor admitted that most of the fifty women he arrested were rich. In 1676, the Suprema claimed it had confiscated over 700,000 ducats for the royal treasury (which was paid money only after the Inquisition’s own budget, amounting in one known case to only 5%). The property on Mallorca alone in 1678 was worth ‘well over 2,500,000 ducats.”[81]”

“Over the past four years of financial collapse, many of us have come to view markets as a fantastical scam: a giant mechanism geared to transfer our hard-earned dollars into the hands of a few select bankers. And when it comes to the Wall Street markets we rely on to trade our equities and debt and commodities, this sentiment is not all wrong.But as every previous generation of Americans understood, a truly open market is one of our fundamental democratic institutions. We construct such markets to achieve some of our most basic rights: to deal with whom we choose, to work with whom we choose, to govern our communities and nation as we (along with our neighbors) choose.”From http://harpers.org/archive/2012/02/0083788

“I use what I call my bathroom metaphor. If two people live in an apartment, and there are two bathrooms, then both have what I call freedom of the bathroom, go to the bathroom any time you want, and stay as long as you want to for whatever you need. And this to my way is ideal. And everyone believes in the freedom of the bathroom. It should be right there in the Constitution. But if you have 20 people in the apartment and two bathrooms, no matter how much every person believes in freedom of the bathroom, there is no such thing. You have to set up, you have to set up times for each person, you have to bang at the door, aren’t you through yet, and so on. And in the same way, democracy cannot survive overpopulation. Human dignity cannot survive it. Convenience and decency cannot survive it. As you put more and more people onto the world, the value of life not only declines, but it disappears. It doesn’t matter if someone dies.”

I’m very “fond” of both Apple and Google. I cd go on for days about how/why they are wonderful. HOWEVER, they are huge entities with tremendous global/historical/political impacts. And in the case of BOTH these companies, they have committed very egregious act. In terms of Google’s “do no evil” well… So in spite of the fact that I love’em and use them and own their stuff, I’m committed to being aware of the good, the bad and the ugly.

Side note: some thoughts generated from Hangout chat today. After 35 years, Microsoftee may have finally wrapped its head around what Apple does as a WHOLE, with Windows 8. I’m an Apple user, but I did look at a Youtube presentation of 8 and it looked very good. Especially in terms of the fact that the whole world is going to go touchpad and voice to text. So it occurs to me that it may not take Facebook 35 years to figure out what Google Plus is doing right. The one thing they will NOT be able to emulate is the fact that Google is looking to tie together its whole panoply of apps into one whole, and Facebook does not have as much to tie together. See/hear http://cinch.fm/scobleizer/282081

A fascinating article, about which I would love to hear intelligent discourse. Also makes me wonder…”Google ‘are’ pussies?” Should it be “Google ‘is” pussy?” or maybe, “Google is a conglomerate of pussies.” Is “pussy” even the right term? How about we bring back “evildoers?” Why let Bush and rightwingers have all the fun?

I have two things to share on this day. You may not agree with me, but I hope you will agree with Voltaire: “I do not agree with what you have to say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it.” And if you don’t agree with THAT, well, as Voltaire might say, “tant pis.”

1. The first is that I regret not being true to my outrage. Of not acting on my beliefs and outrage. Of course, as an American, I’m outraged for all the “usual” reasons. But beyond that I’m outraged at so many things that followed, including the Republicans filibustering the release of funds to help compensate those who sacrificed their health and lives trying to help at ground zero, in the weeks that followed and outrage at the Democrats for not fighting the Republicans harder to cut loose those benefits… and it all goes downhill from there.

I won’t go over the many other outrageous actions and inactions for now, I simply want to say that it amazes me that no matter how much one can try to dismiss “conspiracy nuts,” no one has even begun to explain the collapse of building 7. That fact alone should have been the driving force for a growth of political awareness AND the single biggest cudgel with which to beat the truth out of the military/industrial/media/government complex that treats us like mushroom growers grow mushrooms, by keeping us in the dark and feeding us shit.

Today I did at least take a few minutes to do a few minutes of research. Unfortunately that is all the time I have to spare, and I apologize. I did find one person who articulates a good bit of what I feel:

From there, if you scroll down to Comments, you can read what “Acrabbe” has to say (dated 0520/2011) and at the bottom of HIS comments he points to:

So far, these links come as close to what I feel as I’ve been able to find. Now I’ll need to put this in my own words, and I will not take another decade to do that.

2.

“One day on the road in the English countryside,
A clergyman happened to meet Plague.
“Where are you bound?” asked the clergyman.
“To London,” responded Plague, “to kill a thousand.”
They chatted together a few moments longer, then parted.

Some months later they chanced to meet again,
And the clergyman inquired,
“As I recall, you were going to kill a thousand.
How is it that two thousand died?”
“Ah, yes,” replied Plague. “I killed but a thousand.
Fear killed the rest.”

“We” invaded a country that had NO relation to 9/11 and we punished everyone who pointed to American complicity IN 9/11; complicity by design or neglect or both.

And here is a link to a page pointing to some of the costs of this folly.

Shortlink: http://wp.me/p4njL-4O
The only reason my family survived the 20th Century is by escaping the pogroms, then escaping the nazis. MOST PEOPLE DO NOT THINK LIKE MY FAMILY HAS, and they died horribly. If you have loved ones in Asia, they need to be ready in case they need to leave, and need to be in readiness alert.
If this gets bigger than Chernobyl, you'll want to put as much distance as possible between Japan and your family.

“Serious Danger of a Full Core Meltdown”: Update on Japan’s Nuclear Catastrophe

(…)JUAN GONZALEZ: Karl Grossman, you have been following now for decades the claims of the industry, the politicians, about nuclear energy, both in the United States and around the world. Your assessment of what has happened here and what it will mean in terms of nuclear power in the future?

KARL GROSSMAN: (emphasis mine, FP) What has happened here is an enormous nuclear power tragedy, and we’re on the cusp, I fear, of an even more horrific tragedy, with a loss of cool down accident—and we have multiple loss of cool down accidents underway—and, importantly, breach of containment. And as Paul said, that’s quite possible now. Just the most enormous disaster, except for a loss of water accident in a spent fuel pool, where you have tons upon tons of nuclear poisons—no containment, except for some corrugated steel ceiling. That stuff gets out in a loss of water accident, and it would get out explosively, because of the fuel rods being made of zirconium. And I could explain that. It will just burst into the environment, become airborne, affect not only Japan but much of the world.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And Karl, in the reporting that you’ve done in the past on the battles over the siting of nuclear plants in the United States, because, obviously, all of the reports are saying, “Well, that’s all happening in Japan; here in the United States, we’re in a much better situation with our plants.” But one of the things that you uncovered was an assessment that the government did back in the 1980s of the potential—the potential deaths and injuries that might occur from a reactor accident and a breach of containment in the United States. Could you talk about that memo?

KARL GROSSMAN: Yeah. They have known the consequences all along. This is a report—it’s called “Calculation of Reactor Accident Consequences 2″—done by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, not Greenpeace, and it projects peak early fatalities, peak injuries, peak cancer deaths, scale cost in billions in terms of property damage, and a large hunk of the earth being rendered uninhabitable for millennia. And just, for example, for the Indian Point 3 nuclear plant, which is about 35 miles from where we sit now in New York, 50,000 peak early fatalities; 167,000 peak early injuries; cancer deaths, 14,000; scale cost of billions, they say $314 billion—in 1980s dollars, we’re talking about a trillion.

As to the likelihood of a severe core melt accident, in 1985 the NRC acknowledged that, over a 20-year period, the likelihood of a severe core melt accident to be basically 50/50 among the 100 nuclear power plants—there’s 104 now—in the United States. They’ve known all along here in this country that disaster could come, and there’s a good likelihood of it coming, and they’ve known the consequences.

JUAN GONZALEZ: You’re saying that the NRC itself estimated a 50/50 chance of a meltdown in our plants here within 20 years?

KARL GROSSMAN: Over a 20-year period. That was formal testimony provided to a watchdog committee in Congress chaired by Senator Edward Markey of Massachusetts, when he asked the question, “What does the NRC and its staff believe the likelihood to be of a severe core meltdown?” So, you know, when you hear these lines about, “Oh, the chances of a severe core meltdown, infinitesimal,” and if there is, like you’re hearing these reports out of Japan, an accident, “Oh, just some minor effects among the population”—not at all.

Could Dior management truly have been ignorant of John Galliano’s rabid anti-Semitism up until Feb. 2011? Is it possible that Dior (and other firms that he worked with) did not know about John Galliano’s anti-Semitism until Feb. 2011?

To answer my own question: only if Galliano was having a psychotic break…. and I don’t think he was.

As a sidebar, this is funny, in a dark way, since as a gay man, Galliano would have herself attended said death camp wearing a darling little pink triangle.